Keynote Study Names RBC Royal Bank Top Web Site for Overall Customer Experience; Scotiabank Takes First for Technical Quality, with Perfect Scores in Reliability and Responsiveness for Second Year Running

RBC Royal Bank scores highest in brand impact and for overall customer experience in user testing conducted with 1,658 Canadian consumers

BMO Bank of Montreal repeats as leader in Customer Satisfaction index while Scotiabank stays on top in test of speed and reliability

Keynote assessed the business effectiveness, customer satisfaction and technical quality of leading sites to determine top performers, best practices and opportunities

*Share this news via Twitter @Keynote_Mobile

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Keynote® (NAS: KEYN) , the global leader in Internet and mobile cloud testing and monitoring, today announced the results of a new study examining the business effectiveness of Canadian Banking Websites. In the latest Keynote study of Canadian banking sites, RBC Royal Bank took first place for Overall Customer Experience, while Scotiabank took first for Overall Technical Quality, scoring tops in both Reliability and Responsiveness (Speed). The entire study is available for immediate purchase. To request more information please visit: http://bit.ly/CanadianBanking2013.

The study is part of the work performed by Keynote Competitive Research, a division of Keynote Systems. Winners of Keynote Competitive Research studies are invited to participate in the company's Online Excellence Program which recognizes the "best of the best" websites as ranked in the studies. The rankings are based on responses from real users, who were observed as they accomplished tasks on each of the sites studied, as well as real data collected through Keynote website monitoring to assess the technical quality of the sites. For each study, Keynote recognizes the companies with the overall top ranking, as well as those exhibiting excellence in specific categories.

For the 'Customer Experience' portion of the study, Keynote observed and conducted online interviews with more than 1,650 prospective customers (275 per site) as each interacted with the website of one of six leading Canadian banks: BMO Bank of Montreal, CIBC, President's Choice Financial, RBC Royal Bank, Scotiabank and TD Canada Trust.

Keynote Competitive Research produces leading industry research using the company's commercially available Web performance monitoring and real user experience testing products. Keynote regularly evaluates the current state of online customer experience, technical quality (responsiveness/reliability) and implementation of best practices on leading websites across a wide variety of vertical markets including financial services, automotive, media/entertainment, retail, travel and technology.

For the 2012 Canadian Banking Prospects Study, Canadian consumers not already using a given bank were asked to visit the bank's home page and then complete three tasks. First, they searched the site for information on opening a chequing or savings account to suit their needs. Next, they started the process of opening a chequing or savings account, going as far as possible without actually submitting the application. Finally, they thought of an issue or question they might have had while visiting the site or during the process of trying to open an account and then used the site's help features to find the answer to the issue or question they selected or described.

The study revealed that when tested by actual Canadian consumers RBC Royal Bank's website (www.rbcroyalbank.com) offered the strongest overall Customer Experience, performing best in Brand Impact and scoring second in Customer Satisfaction. Other key findings include:

BMO Bank of Montreal won Customer Satisfaction, while PC Financial was the high scorer for Acquisition Impact;

Account Offering Interest (the perceived quality and diversity of account offerings and resulting interest therein) and Site Organization remain the most important aspects of the overall customer experience, predicting Brand perceptions and Customer Acquisition;

Help and Support, Ease of Opening Account, Visual Appeal, and Site Performance are also key drivers for brand and acquisition.

"We found that as actual Canadian consumers visited bank marketing sites, the attractiveness of the deposit products was the biggest predictor of acquisition likelihood, but that the help and support offered during the shopping process was the biggest predictor of brand outcomes. Identifying the leading drivers of brand outcomes is a significant finding, as it's hard enough to get Canadian consumers to switch banks. If the marketing site makes prospective customers less interested in the bank rather than more, they may never respond to a direct solicitation, never walk into a branch, never come back to the site, never take the next steps," said Chris Musto, general manager of the Keynote Competitive Research group at Keynote.

More Information about theTechnical Quality Rankingsin the U.S. Banking Website Study

In addition to evaluating customer experience with its panel of actual users, the Keynote study also examined two broad aspects of technical quality: responsiveness and reliability. Responsiveness comprises: high speed response, DSL (midband) response, response time consistency, geographic uniformity and load handling, while reliability is comprised of availability and outages.

For the 'Technical Quality' portion of the study, using measurement computers located in four cities across Canada, Keynote measured a typical transaction of starting at the bank's Home Page and going through the process of finding and applying for a Chequing account, stopping where applicants were asked for their identity. Based on the thousands of transactions monitored over the course of the study, Scotiabank ranked first in Overall Technical Quality, scoring tops in both Responsiveness (or speed), and Reliability, with perfect scores of 1000 in both.

In order to collect the Technical Quality data Keynote used its Transaction Perspective® product, the leading real browser-based service for measuring and monitoring website performance from the end user perspective. With Keynote Transaction Perspective the company examines website performance from multiple geographic locations by simulating users clicking through transactions on a website. Keynote collected approximately 2,000 data points that detailed each of the sites' technical performance in terms of page responsiveness and reliability.

The study is available for purchase from Keynote and comes with extensive analysis of brand impact and acquisition impact and the customer experiences driving sites' performance in these areas. Clients will receive an executive presentation, extensive back-up charts and illustrations, and online access to all clickstreams, verbatims, question responses and panel facts for all panelists at all sites for all tasks and can download and use this data in their own research. To inquire about a copy view: http://bit.ly/CanadianBanking2013.

Keynote DeviceAnywhere ® provides the industry's only true cloud-based platform for testing and monitoring the functionality, usability, performance and availability of mobile applications and websites. It's suite of mobile testing solutions is used by over 1,000 mobile developers and enterprises to deliver quality mobile applications and services to the mobile channel.

Keynote SIGOS ® offers active end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) testing and monitoring solutions for mobile, fixed and VoIP communications. Its SITE and Global Roamer products are used by over 200 network operators, content providers, carriers and regulators in over 100 countries worldwide.

Keynote's 4,000 customers represent top Internet and mobile companies and include American Express, AT&T, Disney, eBay, E*TRADE, Expedia, Google, Microsoft, SonyEricsson, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Keynote Systems, Inc., is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can be reached at http://www.keynote.com/ or by phone in the U.S. at 1-800-KEYNOTE.

The trademarks or registered trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. in the United States and other countries include Keynote®, DataPulse®, Keynote Customer Experience Rankings®, Perspective®, Keynote Red Alert®, Keynote WebEffective®, The Internet Performance Authority®, MyKeynote®, SIGOS®, SITE®, keynote® The Mobile & Internet Performance Authority™, Keynote FlexUse®, Keynote DeviceAnywhere®, Keynote DeviceAnywhere Test Center®, Keynote DemoAnywhere® and Keynote MonitorAnywhere® All related trademarks, trade names, logos, characters, design and trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. in the United States and other countries and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.